Maniac Trailer Shows Us a Crazy Multiverse

Just a week after we got our first ambiguous teaser trailer, we’ve been given a closer look at Netflix’s upcoming limited series with a full Maniac trailer. And it’s crazy – like, crazy crazy.

We finally get a feel for what the series might actually be about thanks to today’s Maniac trailer. Netflix won’t divulge much. We know that Emma Stone and Jonah Hill’s Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim are “two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons.” The series’ brief synopsis confirms that “Things do not go as planned.”

We’re seeing the beginning stages of the trailer at the onset of today’s Maniac trailer. Justin Theroux’s Dr. James K. Mantleray addresses the trial’s participants with a monologue. He states, “One you begin to appreciate the structure of the mind, there’s no reason to believe that anything about us can’t be changed. Pain can be destroyed. The mind can be solved.”

We get our first look at Sally Field’s role in the series in today’s Maniac trailer. It’s unclear where her allegiance lies, but she asks Theroux’s Dr. Mantleray suspiciously, “How many of your subjects have ended up catatonic?” To which Dr. Mantleray replies, “Zero. Roughly.” She’s not impressed.

We then see the trial begin as some sort of electronic devices are placed around the participant’s heads. And in attempting to cure Annie and Owen of their mental illness, it appears Dr. Mantleray’s experiment sends their minds into various multiverses of sorts.

We see the duo, mostly together, across various “lifes” that the two have spent together – if nowhere else, just in their minds. Some of these multiverses are seemingly our world, just in a different time period. And others look to pit Annie and Owen in fantasy realms. One looks as though the two were thrown into a world akin to The Lord of the Rings. Another has a Sesame Street-styled talking purple Koala. And a third looks as though it’s a video There’s also a quick segment of Owen walking through a diorama like city much like was done in the movie, Beetlejuice.

“My mind is playing tricks on me”, Owen states as we see the Maniac trailer play these snippets. That, of course, is to be determined. Maniac, brought to us by Primetime Emmy Award winning director Cary Fukunaga, begins streaming on Netflix September 21st.